


Too Late

by mrs_squirrel_chester



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Death, F/M, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-21 15:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3697931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_squirrel_chester/pseuds/mrs_squirrel_chester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine being with Sam and Dean at the end of 9x23.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There was a time when you didn’t give a damn, when you would have walked over his dying body, when you wouldn’t have stopped to check for a pulse. A time that you were the only one that mattered, that getting out alive was your number one priority, when everyone else was collateral damage.

 

Funny how priorities change.

 

You fall to the concrete floor, knees scream in pain, sending waves of it radiating up your thighs and into your back, but you don’t notice. The angel blade that had been gripped tightly in your hands clatters loudly, but it is just a muffled echo to you. Your mind is moving a million miles a minute and not at all as it tries to absorb what’s just happened, as Sam’s feet thunder through the empty building, giving chase, but you know it’s no use. Metatron is long gone and Dean Winchester is dying.

 

Dean, the pain in the ass, arrogant, cocky, pissed off, angry at the world, carrying too large of a burden hunter, stares at you with wide eyes and a gasp from his failing lungs echoes in the dusty air. His face is covered in blood from all the blows delivered by the Angel, but that’s not where your eyes land. They fall to the gaping wound in his chest, where the sister to the blade you carry had just been buried.

 

When he says your name, it’s ragged, rough, pain-laced, and full of death. Your usually steady hands shake as you rip off the shirt you had borrowed from him last night, not caring that all you’re left in is a sports bra. Balling up the shirt, you press it against his chest and wince when a wet cough rips out of him.

 

Large, calloused, blood-caked hands cover yours, and only then do you meet his gaze. That’s a big mistake. Eyes that are normally flickering in anger, frustration or laughter are fading, and it makes your chest tight, makes your lungs ache, makes your heart falter.

 

“We’ll fix this, Dean.” Your voice is thick, tight, strained with the effort of trying not to cry.

 

Hands that are masters at death, torture and pleasure squeeze yours, trying in vain to push you away. “You… you gotta get out of here-”

 

You shake your head, clearing your throat before you speak, “I’m not leaving you.”

 

His eyes flutter closed and panic erupts in your chest. You choke on a sob, “hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey.”

 

He looks down at your futile attempt to stop the blood. “It’s better this way.”

 

“What?! No, you… you don’t mean that.”

 

Dean gasps painfully and your hands shudder with the effort it takes for him to pull in such a small amount of air. “The mark, it’s making me into something I don’t want to be.” His eyes fill with something you never thought you’d see, desperation, fear.

 

Sam is suddenly by your side. “Don’t worry about the mark. We’ll figure it out later. Just hold on, ok?” He can’t hide the thickness in his throat, no matter how many times he tries to clear it away with a cough. “Let’s get you some help.”

 

Dean moans in agony as he is pulled off the floor by his younger brother. They shuffle through the building before the older Winchester cries out, stumbling as his legs give out. Sam rests his brother on a pile of boxes and cringes at the sight of fresh blood covering his brother’s mouth.

 

His breaths are shorter, more labored, and you can barely see the flicker of light in his eyes. “I got something to say to you two.”

 

You stand next to Dean and cover his hand. You know what’s coming, a dying man’s last declaration, and it’s not something you want to hear. “No.”

 

He turns to you and despite the fact he’s dying, he gives you a lopsided smile. “I… I know it’s too late, but I love you.”

 

The dam holding back your tears breaks, but you manage to tell him that you love him, so much.

 

He blinks slowly, much slower than just a moment ago. Turning his attention to his brother, Dean claps Sam on the neck and face. His voice is much thicker and deeper, “I’m proud of us, all of us.”

 

You and Sam simultaneously choke on a sob as the final light fades from Dean’s eyes and his body goes limp. His head falls to Sam’s shoulder. You watch as Sam begs for his brother to wake up, as he sheds his own tears and shakes Dean by the shoulders.

 

“No, no. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, wake up, buddy,” grief grips his voice, wrapping its long fingers around the already tight vocal chords. “Hey. Dean. Dean!” The last gut-wrenching shout of his brother’s name is a sound you could have gone the rest of your life without hearing.

 

It’s when Sam starts sobbing, clutching his brother to his chest, that all the strength leaves your legs. You fall to the ground with a grunt and start weeping, rocking on your knees, clutching onto Dean’s blood-soaked shirt. Never have you felt so full of grief yet so empty at the same time. 


	2. Chapter 2

Dean's body rest in the back seat of the Impala, his baby, covered haphazardly by Sam's jacket. You try not to turn around, instead focusing on the dried blood on your hands, but there's an eerie feeling that's filling the small space and it's starting to get to you. You can tell it's getting to Sam, too. His hands grip the steering wheel a little too tight, his eyes keep flicking to the rear view mirror, and he keeps grinding his teeth.

There's an itch on the back of your neck that you can no longer ignore. You turn just in time to see the jacket slide off Dean's face. His once beautiful face is covered in cuts, bruises, and dried blood. You jerk around as a sob tries leaping out of your throat.

One of Sam's large, equally blood-caked hands is on yours. "We're almost there."

The Men of Letters' bunker that has been your safe haven this past year, a place you have come to call home and now it's set to become a funeral home. You don't doubt that there have been losses in the time the Men of Letters was up and running, but it has been years since Abbadon slaughtered everyone. Once bustling and busy rooms went unused, becoming dusty, files weren't updated, whiskey aged, and food went rotten. Even through all of that, all of the time this place went unused, unlived in, you can't see bringing in a dead body, let alone Dean's.

* * *

You jerk your head up as Sam taps the breaks, sending a slight squeal through the large garage. Forgetting about the dried blood for a moment, you wipe at your tired eyes with the back of your hands before climbing out of the car.

Moving Dean is hard, not just because you're helping Sam carry his dead brother, your dead… boyfriend through the garage, down the stairs, and into his room. It's hard because he's heavy. He's much heavier than the last time he was on top of you or the last time he cuddled with you in the middle of the night when he thought you were sleeping or the last time he wanted to piss you off so he straddled your waist and tickled you to the point of no return.

You've got his legs while Sam grabs him around his chest, locking his fingers together so Dean doesn't fall to the floor. It takes everything in you not to look at his beaten face so you focus on his boots. The brown shoelaces that were too long so he wrapped them around his ankles had come untied at some point. They tickled your forearms as the pair of you shuffled through the halls.

With a grunt, he's on the bed. The memory foam mattress that he swore would remember him sank slightly, absorbing his weight evenly just like you know it did every night before that. You long to crawl in beside him, tangle your legs with his as you curl around him, to bury your face in his neck as your fingers grip the hair on the crown of his head. The feeling is too strong and you look up at Sam.

Sam… the little brother that has seen too much death, has even died himself, has lost his brother, again. His eyes, red and raw from crying and trying not to cry, fill up as his chin shudders. He chokes on your name as you land in his arms, face buried in his chest, hands gripping his shoulder blades. Large, hot tears fall into your hair as he drops his face into it. The room is filled with anguished cries and sobs and every time you pull in a breath, it's filled with the same laundry detergent and faded leather smell of Dean. You force yourself to stay wrapped in the arms of Sam until his cries wind down.

He rubs his hands over your shuddering back. "Why don't you go wash up?"

All you can do is nod since you don't trust your voice. Your throat hurts too much and you know if you were to try and say anything, it would be a garbled mess.

* * *

The water at your feet mixes with dirt and blood, turning it into a reddish brown muddy color.

_"I know it's too late, but I love you."_

His strangled voice erupts in your mind, driving you to your knees with a pained gasp. The tile bites into your skin as you hunch over, hands slap into the water as you begin to dry heave.

_"I love you."_

You gag on nothing as your body tries to cope with the realization that the man you loved since the moment you laid eyes on him proclaimed he loved you. Not just a normal declaration, but a dying one. He left this world saying he loved you and that he was proud of you.

_"I'm proud of us, all of us."_

You. The one with as dark and haunted of a past as the Winchesters. _He_ was proud of _you_. And not just you, but himself. He died saying he was proud of himself. Finally. After all the years of self-hate, self-loathing, he was proud of himself.

Wave after wave of nausea rolls through you until your body finally seems to realize it has nothing more to give. All your tears have been shed, you scream until your voice is raw, you claw at the ground until your nails threaten to break off… you're just a shaking, shuddering mess as you draw yourself up and finish your shower.

* * *

Sam is sitting at a table with a glass of whiskey. The room is dimly lit, probably because he doesn't want you to see the bags under his eyes or the fact his face is redder than before. He pours a healthy amount of whiskey into an empty tumbler, sliding it across the table as you sit.

You raise your glass in a silent salute and toss your head back. It burns a trail down your chest and into your empty stomach. You hiss as you slide the glass across the mahogany table. He wraps his long fingers around it and fills it, sliding it back to you as he fills his own.

The process is repeated a handful of times before you find your voice. It cracks under the reality of the situation, "what do you want to do?"

The room may be dark, but it's not dark enough to hide the welling of tears in his eyes. He runs his tongue across the bottom row of his teeth before answering. His voice is hardly recognizable. "I'm going to summon Crowley."

You almost choke on the whiskey before forcing it down with a pained swallow. "Excuse me?"

He shifts in his chair before taking a large drink. Your name falls heavily from his lips, "he's my brother," his voice cracks in a way that threatens to break your already shattered heart.

"No, I get that, I just mean… what about the mark?"

"We'll figure it out. We always do." He fills his glass after yours is slid back into your hand.

Another long stretch of silence stretches between you, filled only with the clinking of glass on table and a hiss after swallowing the burning whiskey.

_"I love you."_

You chew on your bottom lip as it quakes, another wave of emotion rolling through that you don't want Sam to see. The skin splits and the taste of blood is bitter on your tongue, but you don't care that you're hurt or bleeding, you're not crying. "Ok."

He meets your eyes then. "Ok? As in ok, you'll help me?"

You shrug before draining your glass. "I love him, too."

He reaches across the table and gives your hand a squeeze. "I know you do."

One more round is shared before Sam trudges out of the large room and into one of the many dungeons used for summoning. It's heavily warded and hard to break out of if you're a demon.

You push away from the table a little less steady than you would have liked and cross the room. The hall to Dean's room seems too dark, too empty, but you walk down it anyway. The cool floor bites into the bottom of your feet as you pad closer and closer.

It's when you hear a familiar accented voice through one of the heating grates that your stomach churns. Crowley. He's here, but he's not in the room is Sam conjuring him to. No, he's down the hall, in Dean's room. You break out into a run and scream for Sam.

You slam into the door frame, feet sliding on the floor just as Dean looks up. A piece of paper is folded and set onto his desk, right next to the picture of him and his mom. You manage to choke out something that resembles his name as you stumble into the room.

A sick smirk pulls at his lips and his eyes flick to black. "No, darlin'. Not anymore."

Sam's feet thunder down the hall as the King of Hell and the former hunter disappear before your eyes. His eyes are wide as he scans the room, his gun drawn. His eyes fall to the bed where his brother had lain no less than an hour before.

"What's going on?" He's in front of you, hunched over because of the height difference. "Where's Dean?!"

You try to answer, you really do, but nothing comes out except a strangled cry. You point to the table, to the note Dean had written. He's across the room in two strides, tucking the gun into the waistband of his jeans as he moves.

His jaw clenches as he reads the note and then his eyes are on you in a flash. "What happened?"

You swallow the lump in your throat, the image of Dean's green eyes flicking to black is on a loop and you feel like you can't breathe.

"Hey, what happened?!" The yellow paper with black ink is held out in front of you.

_"LET ME GO."_

You lick your suddenly dry lips, wishing you had a tube of chapstick. "He's with Crowley."

He knows you're not telling him everything so he just stands there with a brow arched, the note dangling from his fingers.

"Sam… Dean… he's not Dean anymore."

His brows knit together causing his forehead to wrinkle deeply. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Dean's a demon."


End file.
